We are pleased to announce that the second TwinCafé took place this week.
Our first issue in August was about the Twin City Lab itself and the current situation of twinning.
With our TwinCafé, we offer you an alternative to network and exchange. Every 4-6 weeks, we invite you to a compact online session in meet-up style. Each time we provide useful, informative, and valuable input and opportunities for facilitated networking and exchange.
For our last session, we had an exciting and enthusiastic expert Yuriy Fylyuk.
He is improving his hometown Ivano-Frankivsk and motivates other cities to innovate.
During TwinCafé we talked about his public activities, projects, and business. He told us about his biggest projects Urban Space 100 and Promprylad, both created on the “Warm City” platform. We also talked about his personal experience, values, motivation, mistakes, and challenges.
Yuriy shared his path to his first projects, how he found while working on projects at the intersection with the economy, social impact, and innovation.
Yuri has been involved in public activism since childhood. He joined the international student organization AIESEC and became the president of the organization in Ukraine. Later, he decided to move to Kyiv, where he founded a fairly successful business together with friends. The business suffered problems due to the financial crisis of 2008. He returned to his hometown where he started the restaurant business with friends. This business taught him a lot and gave him a lot of experience for subsequent projects. Today, his project “23 restaurants” is the most successful restaurants chain in the city.
A few years after Yuri’s return, he decided to give his city something more. Since 2013 he has become increasingly interested in the development of the city and society. The profit-oriented business didn’t attract him anymore. He realized that interaction, dialogue between business and local governments is an extremely important factor. He realised also that sustainable development always comes from the bottom up, so it makes no sense to go into politics. The idea was to find people who have a request for change and to push the city forward together. As a result, he created the “Warm City” platform with other enterprising people. Its main purpose is to motivate and unite the middle class around initiatives aimed at city development. To implement such ideas, various programs and projects for sustainable urban development were launched and implemented in such fields as education, art, new economy, urban planning, culture, architecture, energy, urban mobility, and entrepreneurship.
You can learn more about the platform here: https://warm.if.ua/en
Then, we discussed his project Urban Space 100. It is a social enterprise in the format of a restaurant. The project brought together 100 people who invested $ 1,000 in the project each. With this money, a profit-generating restaurant was opened. 80% of the profit is invested in Ivano-Frankivsk development projects.
You can learn more about the project here: https://urbanspace.if.ua/en
Yuriy also shared his biggest project Promprylad. Renovation with the participant. This is the transformation project on the premise of the old plant into an innovation complex.
The main task of the project is to combine business and social interests in an organic way, and to help the region finally reboot from post-Soviet contexts to modern ones through education, art, new economy, and urban planning.
This is a unique project for Ukraine. According to its model, it is a business that simultaneously solves economic problems, creates a great social effect, and added value for its investors. Another important task of the project is to connect the city to the international context.
The project belongs to a new area of impact investment. It includes offices of innovative companies, a children’s development center, a space maker, laboratories, accelerators, workshops, exhibition and art centers, a farmers’ market, restaurants, and much more. In addition, one-third of the area will be provided to public, cultural, and social initiatives whose activities coincide with the vision of the project. Yuriy told us that Promprylad has already received more applications for rent than can be provided.
Also at the end of the meeting, we talked about the possibilities of international cooperation and projects that can be implemented in the framework of bilateral and multilateral cooperation. According to Yuri, the potential for cooperation between cities is incredible, all you need to do is just start with first small ideas and projects to get to know each other better. He believes that everything is possible.
Yuriy invited all participants to visit Ivano-Frankivsk and the Promprylad.Renovation project and even possibly become a part of it.
You can learn more about the project here: https: //promprylad.ua/en/
Promprylad.Renovation is a unique impact investment project
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We are sincerely grateful to Yuri for the wonderful impulse and motivation, as well as to all our participants for your interest. See you next time!